Brendan Gallagher continues his expert and authoritative look at the history of Rugby Union

THE return of rugby to the Olympics was probably the major good news story of this era and the picture of the Fijian Sevens squad celebrating their nation’sfirst ever Olympic medal one of the enduring images of Rio2016, but frankly rugby has had a strange, unsatisfactory, relationship with the IOC over the decades.
Baron de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, had in many ways been inspired by the game’s guiding principles of a mateurism,team work and chivalrous competition and ...